Senate Bill 7018 will go a long way toward moving Florida homeowners out of state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. and into the private insurance market, according to the bill’s authors. The overriding goal is to depopulate (the Senate’s term) Citizens.
The Florida Senate Banking and Insurance subcommittee has sent a bill to the full Senate that would revamp Citizens Property Insurance Corp. significantly. Members of the committee say the bill would take Citizens back to its roots as the insurer of last resort for the state’s residents. The company is currently the largest insurer in the state with 1.2 million policies.
Last September, the owner of a Seffner, Florida, home decided to buy sinkhole insurance. He says he had never really considered it before. An inspector came to the house, checked things out and gave him the thumbs up.
Given: The State of Florida will assess every property insurance policyholder if Citizens Property Insurance Corp. cannot pay all of its claims from its reserve. Assessments are the last resort for the state-run insurer of last resort. Citizens will not fold unless (or until) the Legislature says it will fold.
Once again, the Florida Legislature is debating ways to move Florida residents off Citizens Property Insurance Corp.’s rolls. The state-backed insurer is the largest property insurance carrier in the state, and lawmakers continue to worry that the company’s reserves will not survive a major catastrophe. If that happens, everyone loses, according to Citizens’ critics.
Well, if Florida didn’t have enough to boast about, we do now! The National Association of Insurance Commissioners recently released a comparison of insurance expenditures by state and by nation. Florida, the fourth most populous state, ranks third in the U.S. for insurance expenditures. We shell out more every year than developing nations do.
Industry numbers are coming in for fourth quarter 2012, and there is not much good news for property/casualty insurance customers. According to the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers’ Commercial P/C Market Index, commercial coverage premiums jumped 5 percent on average during the last three months of the year. The Southeast U.S., including Florida, followed the national trend.
It seems that hardly a week goes by without another insurance provider being found guilty of wasteful, fraudulent, and exploitative business practices. With the stakes so high and matters such as a person’s house, car, or health on the line, any malicious or negligent activity on the part of an insurance company has the potential to irreparably damage a person’s life.
Superstorm Sandy missed Florida, but as we have noted in past posts the storm wrought havoc further up the East Coast. As the insurance industry looks back at 2012, it has become clearer that Sandy was a key component of insurance companies’ higher than normal catastrophic losses last year.
In an incident that would be very scary to any homeowner in Miami-Dade County, a woman in another state is lucky to be alive after a boulder rolled downhill and crashed into their home. The boulder crushed the wall and rolled into the couple’s bedroom, badly injuring the woman. Now the woman, her husband and the home’s owner are hoping the homeowners insurance company will help with the repair costs.
